Until the End of Time
by HelloHelpMe
Summary: AU - Raven has a secret...The Destroyer has taken over her, and now that she's in control again she might be able to defeat him. She teams with the other titans, but do they really stand a chance?
1. Prologue

The palace still shook occasionally as the earth rumbled in memory, groaned as if it would deny what had happened. Bars of sunlight cast through rents in the walls made motes of dust glitter where they yet hung in the air. Scorch-marks marred the walls, the floors, the ceilings. Broad black smears crossed the blistered paints and gilt of once-bright murals, soot overlaying crumbling friezes of men and animals which seemed to have attempted to walk before the madness grew quiet. The dead lay quiet, men, women, and children, struck down in attempted flight by the black lightnings that had flashed down every corridor, or seized by the fire that had stalked them, or sunken into stone of the tower, the stones that had flowed and sought, almost alive, before stillness came again. In odd counterpoint, colorful tapestires and painting, masterworkds all, hung undisturbed except where bulging walls had pushed them awry. Finely carved furnishings, inlaid with ivory and gold, stood untouched except where rippling floors had toppled them. The mind-twisting had struck at the core, ignoring peripheral things.  
Raven wandered the palace, deftly keeping her balance when the earth heaved. "Hringer! My friend, where are you?" The edge of her white cloak trailed through blood as she stepped over the body of an elf, his handsome features marred by the horror of his last moments, his still-open eyes frozen in disbelief. "Where are you Hringer? Where is everyone hiding?" Her eyes gave the impression of seeing too much. Raven began to laugh suddenly. 

"Hringer, come to me. You should see this." Behind her, the air rippled, shimmered, solidified into a man who looked around, his mouth twisting with distaste. He was much taller than Raven, clad in black with skin of crimson red. He stepped without care to the bodies on the ground. The floor trembled, but his attention was focased on the unaware Raven.  
"Lady of the Morning," he said, "I have come for you." Raven's laughter cut off as if it'd never been, and she turned, seemingly unsurprized. "Bringer, Bringer, where are you?"

The red-skinned man's eyes narrowed, darting to the body of the elf, then back to Raven. "Perhaps, my trap for your memory was too much."

Raven shuddered. "You are too dangerous."

"So you do remember that much at least. What else do you remember? Remember, light-loving fool! Remember!"

For a moment Raven stared at his raised hand, fascinated by the patterns of grime. Then she spoke. "What do you want? Who are you?"

The demon drew himself up arrogantly. "I am Trigon"  
"Betrayer of Hope." It was a whisper from Raven.  
Memory stirred but she turned her head, shying away from it.

"You do remember some things. Yes, Betrayer of Hope is what mortals call me, just as they call you Slayer, but unlike you I will embrace my name. They gave me the name to revile me, but I will make them worship it! What will you do with yours? After this day, the title Slayer will be spoken with greater hatred. What will you do with that?"

Raven frowned down the ruined hall. "Bringer should be here," she murmered absently, then raised her voice. "Bringer, where are you?" The floor shook. The elf's body moved, as if to answer her call. Her eyes did not see him.

Trigon scornfully said, "Once you were mighty, now you are a pitiful, shattered wench."

"Bringer..." It was the only word she could think of.  
Trigon's sudden smile was cruel. "I think it is now that your sanity should be returned." He extended his hand and the light dimmed, as if a shadow had been laid across the sun. Pain blazed in Raven, and she screamed, a scream that came from her depths, a scream she could not stop. She toppled backward, crashing to the marble floor; her head struck stone, and rebounded. Her heart tried to beat its way out of her chest, and every pulse gushed a new flame. Helplessly, she convulsed, her skull a sphere of pure agony on the point of bursting. Her hoarse screams reverberated through the palace.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the pain receded. The outflow seemed to take a thousand years before she could shakily push herself onto her hands and knees. Her eyes fell on the elf, and the screamed ripped out of her dwarfed any noise she'd made before. Tottering, almost falling, she scarambled brokenly across the floor. It took every bit of strength to pull him into a sitting position in her lap. Her hands shook as she looked at his staring face.  
"Light, help me." Her body curved around his protectivly, her sobs just barely controlled.

"Slayer, you can have him back if you serve me."

Raven raised her head, and Trigon took an involuntary step back from that gaze. "Ten years, Betrayer," Raven said softly, the soft sound of a sword being drawn. "Ten years you have wracked the earth and now this. I will-"

"Ten years! You pitiful fool! The war has not lasted ten years, but since the beginning of time! You and I have fought many battles, and we will continue to feud, but in the end I will be triumphant!" He finished in a shout, with a raised fist, and it was Raven's turn to pull back, breath catching at the glow in Trigon's eyes.  
Carefully Raven laid Bringer's fingers down. Tears blurred her vision, but her voice was iced iron. "For what you have done, there can be no forgiveness, Trigon, and I will destroy you beyond anything you can"  
"Remember, you fool! Remember your attack on me before and remember my counter stroke! Remember! What hand slew Bringer, Slayer? Not mine. What hand struck down everyone who loved you, everyone you loved? Not mine. Not mine, remember? Know the price of opposing me"

Raven's howl beat at the walls, the howl of one who discovered her soul damned by her own hands, and she tore at her face as if to forget. Everywhere she looked, she found the dead. Torn they were, or consumed by fire, or lightning, or half-consumed by stone.

Everywhere lay the lifeless faces she knew. Old servants, old friends or her childhood, faithful companions, and solidors sprawled like broken dolls, play stilled forever. All slain by her hand. Her friend's faces accused her, blank eyes asking why, and her tears were no answer. Trigon's laughter flogged her, drowned out the howl. She could not bear the faces, the pain. She could not bear to remain any longer.

The land around her grew thicker as encased by her engery. A river flowed full of it. Tears glistened on her cheeck as she turned her face upward. "Forgive me!" She did not think it could come, forgivness. Not for what she had done, but she shouted to the ones she'd killed anyway, begged for what she did not beleive she could recieve. Her aura tainted the world. The very air found itself thick with it. The blackness made the world thrash and quiver like a living thing in agony, and it thrust itself skyward while Raven sobbed.

At last, the earth stilled to trembling mutters. Of Raven, no sign remained. Where she had stood a mountain rose into the sky, molten lave still gushing from its peak. The broad river had split to surround the mountain, to form an island. On the island Trigon laughed. "It is not done between us Slayer. It will not be done until the end of time."

And then he was gone. And the mountain and the island stood waiting.

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(A/N: Another Raven and Trigon ficcie, yes, yes. Well, it's already all written, so all I have to do for this one is type it out, then post it! ha-ha. Please R&R! I live on comments!) 


	2. Wind and a Beginning

(Disclamer: Right...Me owning Teen Titans...I wish.)

* * *

Time goes on, and ages pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades into myth, and even that is long forgotten. In the Third Age, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. But it a beginning.

Below the cloud-capped peaks that gave the mountains their name, the wind flailed into Westwood, and beat at two men walking with a cart and horse down the rock-strewn track called the Quary Road. For all that spring should have come a good month since, the wind carried an icy chill as if it would rather bear snow.

Gusts plastered Beast Boy's coat to his back, whipped the earth-colored wool against him, then streamed it out behind him. He wished the coat were heavier. Half the time when he tried to tug it back around him it only caught on the wind again.

As a particularly strong blast tugged the cloak out of his hand, he glanced at his grandfather over the back of the shaggy bay mare. He felt foolish about wanting to reassure himself that Ghorin was still there, but it was that kind of day. The wind howled when it rose, but aside from that, quiet lay heavy on the land. The soft creak of the axle sounded loud by comparison. No birds sang in the forest, no squirrels chittered from a branch. Not that he expected them, really; not this spring.

Only trees that kept leaf or needle through the winter had any green about them. Snarls of last year's bramble spread brown webs over stone outcrops from trees. Scattered white patches of snow still dotted the ground where clumps of trees kept deep shade. Where sunlight did reach, it held neither strength nor warmth. The pale sun was to the east, but its light was crisply dark, as if mixed with shadow. It was an awkward morning, made for unpleasant thoughts.

Winter had been bad on the farm, worse than even his grandfather could remember, but it must have been harsher in the mountains, if the number of wolves driven into Westwood was any guide. Wolves raided the sheep pens, and chewed their way into the barns to get the cattle and horses. It was no longer safe after dark. Men were prey as often as sheep, and the sun did not always have to be down.

Ghorin was taking steady strides on the other side of Bell, using his spear as a walking staff, ignoring the wind that made his brown cloak flap like a banner. Now and again, he touched the mare's flank lightly to keep her moving. With his thick chest, and broad face, he was a pillar of reality in that morning, like a stone in the middle of a drifting dream. His sun-roughed ceeks might be line and his hair have only a sprinkling of black amoung the gray, but there was a solidness to him. He stumped down the road now impassively. Wolves and bears were all very well, his manner said, things that any sheep must be aware of, but they had best not try to stop Ghorin from getting to Tamm's feild.

With a guilty start Beast Boy returned to watching his side of the road, Ghorin's matter-of-fact attitude reminding him of the task.

Two small caskets of Ghorin's apple brandy rested in the lurching cart, and eight larget barrels of apple cider, only slightly hard after winter's curing. Ghorin delivered the same every year to the Winespring Inn for use during Edmond Tine, and he had declared that it would take more than wolves or bears to stop them this year. Even so, they had not been to the village for weeks.

As Beast Boy watched from his side of the road, the feeling grew in him that he was being watched. For a while he tried to shrug it off. Nothing moved or made a sound amoung the trees, except the wind. But the feeling not only persisted, it grew stronger. The hairs on his arms stirred; his skin prickled as if it itched on the inside. He rubbed irritably at his arms, and told himself to stop letting fancies take him. There was nothing in the woods on his side of the road, and Ghorin would have spoken if something was on the other. He glanced over his should and blinked. NOt more than twenty paces back down the road a cloaked figure followed them, black, dull, and ungleaming.

It was more habit than anything else that kept him walking backward alongside the cart while he looked.

The follower's cloak covered him to his boot tops, the cowl tugged well foward so no part of him showed. Vaguely Beast Boy thought that there was something odd about the man, but it was the shadowed opening of the hood that facinated him. He could see only the vaguest outlines of a face, but he had the feeling he was looking right into the stranger's eye. And he could not look away. Queasiness settled in his stomach. There was only shadow to see in the hood, but he felt a hatred as sharply as if he could see a snarling face, hatred for everything that lived. Hatred for him most of all, for him above all things.

Abruptly a stone caught his heel and he stumbled, breaking his eyes away from the dark man. Only a outthrust hand grabbing Bell's harness saved him from falling flat on his back. With a startled snort, the mare stopped, twisting her head to see what had caught her.

Ghorin frowned over Bell's back. "Are you alright, lad?"

"A stranger," Beast Boy said breathlessly, pulling himself upright. "A stranger, following us."

"Where?" The old man peered back warily.

"There, down the..." Beast Boy's words trailed off as he turned to point. The road behind was empty. Disbelieving, he stared into the forest on both sides of the road. Bare-branched trees offered no hiding, but there was not a glimmer of another person. He met his grandfather's questioning gaze. "He was there. A man in a black cloak."

"I wouldn't doubt your word, but where has he gone?"

"I don't know, but he was there." A pause. "He was."

Ghorin shoke his grizzled head. "If you say so, lad. Come then. We'll check for footprints." He started towards the rear of the cart, his cloak whipping in the wind. "If we find them, we'll know for a fact he was there. If not, well, these are days to make a man think he's seeing things."

Beast Boy abruptly realized what had been so odd about the follower, other than his being there at all. The wind that beat Ghorin and him had not so much as shifted a fold of the black cloak. His mouth was suddenly dry. He must have imagined it. This was a morning to prickle a man's imagination.

With a worried frown he peered into he woods around them; it looked different than it ever had before. Almost since he was old enough to walk, he had run loose in the forest. The ponds and streams of Westwood was where he had learned to swim. Nowhere in all of his travels had he found a place that frightened him. Today, though, the Westwood was not the place he remembered. A man who could disappear so suddenly could reappear just as suddenly, maybe even right beside them.

"No, nevermind." When Ghorin stopped in surprize, Beast Boy covered his flush by tugging at Bell's mane, turning around. "You're probably right. No point looking for what isn't there, not when we can use the time getting on to the village. And out of this wind."

"I suspect that I could do with a mug of ale where it's warm." Ghorin said slowly. He clucked Bell into action and they were off again, nearly to their distination.

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(A/N: Hmm...A rather boring chapter if you're the type to leap for battle scences. Don't worry. They're coming. In the next chapter, the other titans will be introduced. PLEASE R&R! puppy dog eyes)


	3. Bad Omens

(Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Titans. Unfortunately.)

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The village lay close onto the Westwood, the forest gradually thinning until the last few trees stood actually among the stout frame houses. The land sloped gently down to the east. Though not without patches of woods, farms and hedge-bordered fields and pastures quilted the land beyond the village all the way to Waterwood and its tangle of streams and ponds.

Several times Ghorin paused to engage one man or another into brief conversation. Since he and Beast Boy had not been off the farm for weeks, everyone wanted to catch up on how things were out that way. Ghorin spoke of damage from winter storms, each one worse than the last, and stillborn lambs, of brown fields where crops should be sprouting and pastures greening, of ravens flocking in where songbirds had come in years before. Grim talk, with preparatons for Edmond Tine going on all around them, and much shaking of heads. It was the same on all sides.

"I have to get this cart to the inn," Ghorin said, nodding to the barrels in the cart, but the man he had been speaking to stood his ground with a sour expression upon his face.

"What are we going to do about Yneve, Ghorin?" The man demanded. "We can't have a Seer like that for the town."

Ghorin sighed heavily. "It's not our place. The Seer is woman's business."

"Well, we'd better do something, Ghorin. She said we'd have a mild winter. And a good harvest. Now you ask her what she hears on the wind, and she just scowls at you and stomps off."

"If you asked her the way you usally do," Beast Boy said, "you're lucky she dosen't thump you with that stick she carries. We've got to go."

The man paid Beast Boy no attention, and continued his conversation with Ghorin. "Yneve is too young to be Seer, Ghorin. If the Woman's circle won't do something about it, then the Village Council has to."

"What business of yours is the Seer?" roared a woman's voice. The man flinched as his wife marched out of the house. "You try meddling in the Woman's Circle, and see how you like your own cooking."

"But Daise," the man whined, "I was just-"

"If you'll pardon me, Daise," Ghorin said. "The Light shine on you both." He got Bell moving again, leading her around the scrawny fellow. Daise was concentrating on her husband now, but any minute she could realize whom he had been talking to.

Beast Boy stepped along just as quickly as Ghorin, perhaps even more so. He was sometimes cornered when Ghorin was not around, with no way to escape long and unwanted converations unless through rudeness.

Soon the streets opened onto the Green, a broad expanse in the middle of the village. Usually covered with thick grass, the Green showed only a few fresh patches among the yellowish brown of dead grass and the black of bare earth. A double handful of geese waddled about, beadily eyeing the ground but not finding anything worth pecking.

Towards the end of the Green, two low, railed footbridges crossed a clear stream, and one bridge wider than the other and stout enough to bear wagons. The Wagon Bridge marked where the North Road, coming down from Taren Ferry and Wilt Hill, became the Old Road, leading to Devlin Ride. OUtsiders sometimes found it funny that the road had one name to the north and another to the south, but that was the way that it'd been forever. It was a good enough reason for Westwood's people.

Near the Winespring Inn, a score of old women sang softly as they erected the Spring Pole. A knot of younger girls sat cross-legged and watched as the older women cut branches in preparation for Edmond Tine, the celebration of the year.

The whole day of Edmond Tine would be taken up with singing and dancing and feasting, with time out for footraces, and contest in almost anything. Prizes would be given not only in archery, but for the best with a sling, and the quarterstaff. There would be a riddle-solving contest, and puzzles, at the rope tug, and lifting weights, prizes for the best singer, the best dancer, and the best fiddle player, for the quickest to shear a sheep.

Edmond Tine was supposed to come when spring had well and truly arrived, the first lambs born and the first crop cut. Even with the cold hanging on, though, no one had any idea of putting it off. Everyone could use a little singing and dancing. And if the rumors could be beleived a Gleeman would arrive and perform, and fireworks would come with the first peddler. That had been causing considerable talk; it was ten years since the last display of fireworks, and a Gleeman hadn't been to Westwood for 30 years.

The Winespring Inn stood at the east end of the Green, hard beside the Wagon Bridge. The first floor of the inn was river rock, though the goundation was of older stone.

"Here we are, lad." Ghorin reached for Bell's harness, but she stopped in front of the inn before his hand touched the leather. "Knows the way better than I," he chuckled.

The innkeeper stepped lightly from his domain, despite the size of his girth. A smile split his round face, which was topped by a sparse fringe of gray hair. He was in shirtsleeves despite the chill, with a spotless white apron wrapped around him. A sliver medallion in the form of a set of balance scales hung on his chest.

The medallion, along with the full-size set of scales used to weigh coins of the merchants, was the symbol of the Mayor's office.

"Ghorin!" the Mayor shouted as he hurried toward them. "The Light shine on me, it's good to see you at last. And you Garfeild, how are you my boy?"

"Fine, Master Vere," Beast Boy replied. "And you?" But Vere's attention was back on Ghorin.

A quick tug at Beast Boy's sleeve and a voice pitched low, for his ear alone, distracted him from the older men's talk. "Come on, BB, while they're talking. Before they put you to work."

Beast Boy glanced down, and had to grin. Cyborg crouched beside the cart so Ghorin and vere couldn't see him, his body contorted like a stork trying to bend itself double. Beast Boy smiled, the smile filled with mischeif, as usual.

"Dav and I caught a badger. We're going to set it loose on the girls on the Green, come on," Cyborg urged. Besat Boy's smile broadened; finally, some fun. He took a quick look at his grandfather who was still talking.

He and Cyborg sprinted a short distance. "We had strangers in the village last evening."

For an instant Beast Boy stopped breathing. "A man on foot?" he asked intently. "A man in a black cloak that doesn't move in the wind?"

Cyborg swallowed his grin, and his voice dropped to an even hoarser whisper. "You say him, too? I thought I was the only one. Don't laugh BB, but he scared me."

"I'm not laughing. I could swear he hated me, that he wanted to kill me." Beast Boy shivered. Until that day he had never thought of anyone wanting to kill him, really wanting to kill him. That sort of thing didn't happen in Westwood. A fist fight, or a wrestling match, but not killing.

"I don't know about killing. I thought he was odd enough anyway. I looked away for just a moment, and then he was gone! It's been three days." Cyborg attempted a laugh that came out as a croak. "I thought- for just a minute- that it was the Dark One."

"My grandfather thinks I was jumping at shadows."

"I told Dav, and he's been watching like a hawk since, but hasn't seen anything. Now he thinks I was trying to trick him." He lapsed into affronted silence.

Beast Boy rubbed the top of his head briskly, wondering what to say. Ghorin called out, "Lad! Help me move these caskets, so you can see the Gleeman."

"Gleeman!" Cyborg exclaimed at the same moment that Beast Boy asked, "When will he get here?"

"Arrived in the dead of the night, he did." The innkeeper shock his head in disapproval. "Pounded on the door til he woke the whole inn. If not for the Festival, I'd have turned him away."

"He dosn't wear a black cloak, does he?" cyborg asked.

The innkeeper's belly shook with his chuckle. "Black! His cloak is every Gleeman's cloak I've seen. More patches than cloak, and more colors than I can think of."

Beast Boy startled himself by laughing out loud, a laugh of pure releif. He clapped a hand over his mouth in embarrassment.

cyborg and Beast Boy carried the first barrels through the common room, Master Vere was already filling a pair of mugs with his best brown beer, his own make. Scratch, the inn's cat wrapped his tail around Beast Boy's feet. He tripped and nearly dropped his side of the barrels. With Beast Boy limping slightly, they put down the load and went to get the rest.

Before they even set down the last casket, they rushed to see the Gleeman. Little did they know that two other strangers waited to meet them.

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(A/N: Okay, so, here's your only hint about who the two strangers are...not Robin, Star, or Raven. I haven't gotten any reveiws yet...sniffle Is this story unwanted? Please reveiw!

With luff,  
H.H.M.)


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